Next Man Up (Making the Score #2) - Tawdra Kandle Page 0,37

visited, too, but she was spending most of her summer bouncing between her mother’s new condo outside of Trenton and her father’s apartment in Manhattan. To say she was miserable was an understatement.

Not for the first time, I wished I had pushed Zelda to give me her number. I had a strange feeling that she would’ve been the first one to respond . . . and maybe I could’ve even talked her into coming to spring me from home once in a while, even though the trip from Lancaster to Franklin was a solid two hours.

I’d tried casually to get Nate to give me her contact info before we’d left Birch back in May, but he’d claimed that he didn’t have her number either. That didn’t shock me; for Nate, the only woman whose number he’d want was Quinn. And there hadn’t been any way to get Quinn or Gia to give up the info on Zelda, as I knew they’d become immediately suspicious if I even hinted that I wanted it.

Thus, I couldn’t text Zelda. Nate wasn’t answering, and the girls . . . they weren’t who I wanted to see.

Swallowing a frustrated sigh, I left my bedroom and wheeled to the kitchen, where my mother was working on her computer. She glanced up at me with an absent smile.

“Hi, honey. Everything okay?”

It was the constant question. I clenched my jaw and took a deep breath before I answered, conscious that I didn’t want to bite her head off.

“Yeah, fine. Just. . .” I shook my head. “Looking for something to do, I guess.”

“How’s that online class going?”

I’d signed up for summer classes that I could complete through distance learning, following the hunch that I’d need distractions. But to my disappointment, the courses were easy and didn’t require much in the way of attention or time.

“It’s great. All caught up.” I tapped my finger on the arm of my chair. “Where’s Dad?”

She tilted her head toward the door on the other side of the kitchen. “In the garage. Why don’t you go out and check on him?”

“Guess I will.”

I rolled down the ramp my dad had made for me before I was even released from the hospital the first time, ignoring the stab of guilt I felt over the fact that I hadn’t ever even thought about using it before today. I hadn’t hung out in my father’s workshop with him since I was in elementary school, since before football became my life. Yet even knowing that, he’d made sure that I had the option to get to the garage if I wanted.

My father was sitting down, straddling a long bench, holding a smooth length of wood in one hand and a square of sand paper in the other. He glanced up at me, smiling, as I neared his seat.

“Hey, champ.” He winked at me, as he always did. “What’s going on? Everything all right?”

“Yeah.” I cleared my throat, thinking that if I had to answer that question one more time, I might go ballistic on someone. “What’re you up to out here?”

“Ah. New project.” He held up the wood as though I might be able to figure out what he was making by seeing that. “It’s a surprise for your mom.”

“Oh, yeah? What’s it going to be?” I looked around, taking in the various pieces and tools. I still didn’t have a clue. Nothing looked like it went together. Not yet, anyway.

“Well . . .” Dad stretched his back, grimacing slightly. “You probably don’t remember it, but Grandma had a rocking chair in her house. It had actually been her grandmother’s, I guess. Real old piece, but it was in good shape. Your mother loved it. But when Grandma died, Aunt Elena’s oldest girl, Karrie, was pregnant, and so Elena convinced Mom that she should get the chair. She pointed out that we didn’t have any daughters we could pass it on to.”

“What about me?” Not that I wanted an old rocking chair, but there was a chance that someday, I might have a wife and maybe even a daughter. And didn’t they have a right to my great-great grandma’s antique?

My father chuckled. “When it comes to this kind of thing, logic doesn’t always enter the picture. Anyway, Mom was always sad about it, so last month, I called up Karrie on the sly and went over there to see the chair. I took pictures and measurements, and I’m re-creating the rocking chair. Or at least I’m giving